Read Online Hot and Irresistible by Dianne Castell - Free Book Online Page B

else happen and just why in blazes shouldn’t she give up on Beau?
    Because she couldn’t. She was plum crazy about the big undersexed oaf and had to figure out what was holding him back from being crazy about her. She also needed to figure out what was going on with her friends and where was this danger. She felt a bit faint. Danger was not her thing at all. BrieAnn Montgomery threw fund-raising galas and arranged the best social events in Savannah and had fine manners and good hair and knew how to be a belle…except she couldn’t twirl a baton for spit.
    Brie headed for the back yard of Magnolia House. She needed a Bloody Mary, then shivered over the bloody part. Lordy, all this commotion was no way to start a fine spring evening. She pushed her way through the tangle of blue flowers and white dogwood at the archway. How’d that woman get through this jungle so easily?
    Circumventing the hotel patio, which was adorned in glittering candlelight, fine china, crisp linens, and lucky guests dining on yummy Magnolia House cuisine, she entered the back door of the hotel. The familiar narrow hallway of cherrywood paneling lined with vintage hotel pictures usually made her feel welcome; this time it didn’t. Something was different about the place, something was…wrong. A bad feeling, dangerous even. There was that horrid word again.
    “And just what are you doing sneaking in my hotel,” said Charlotte soon-to-be-Missus Griffin Parish. She linked arms with Brie. “Trying to keep a low profile after your day of sex and seduction out there on the water with a certain guy? Well, I want every teeny little detail. I want the vava-voom.”
    “Right now I’d settle for a vava and to top it off Lamont Laskin’s coming to Mama’s for dinner and one of your maids just paid me a visit and said we’re all headed for a big mess of trouble around here. She has amber hair and blue eyes, a black uniform dress, and white apron, and I think I’m having an attack of the vapors and I have no idea whatsoever what vapors even are.”
    Charlotte stopped dead in the middle of the hallway halting Brie with her. “Breathe, honey, breathe. You’re going to pass out cold. I’m sorry about Beau and even sorrier about Lamont and dinner. That uniform you described isn’t ours, but we’ll find Mr. Rutledge. Being the manager, he’ll know where to find this woman.”
    “Did I just hear my name,” said Daemon Rutledge from behind Brie. He smiled, looking much younger than his sixty-plus years, and took Brie’s hand. “How are you these days? And your mama and the judge? You give them my best, now, you hear?” He smoothed back his neat salt-and-pepper hair. Any hotel in Savannah would give five of their present employees for just this one.
    “I’m trying to find a certain maid. She’s my coloring, black cotton dress with white lacy apron and matching maid’s cap.”
    Daemon pointed to a picture hanging with a group of hotel photos on the wall. “There it is, the very clothes you described, but of course these pictures were from a long time ago. Was the lady you met going to a vintage party? See, that there’s a picture of our first staff here at Magnolia House in just such a uniform. And there I am.” Mr. Rutledge tapped a younger version of himself, complete with rose in his lapel.
    “Holy mother in heaven!” Brie put her hand to her heart to keep it from leaping right out of her chest. “And that’s the girl I was talking to. The girl who warned me there was trouble.” She touched the maid beside the young Rutledge. “She’s the one who visited me no more than twenty minutes…” Brie’s gaze fused with Charlotte’s and Daemon turned the color of mashed potatoes.
    Char pulled in a deep breath and forced a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Brie, honey, you’re all out of sorts because of Beau and you’ve been in this hotel a million times, so you just dreamed up this girl, is all. Let’s go in the bar. I